No matter how much time I spend here I can’t escape the whiteness of my skin, the way I stand out no matter what I do. But it’s more than my skin. It’s my privilege.

They say love is supposed to set you free, but I think love binds you. It’s only once you’re so full of joy that you can imagine a devastation of loss.

There is a whole mythology, a set of rules and issues surrounding a relationship like ours, that sneaks in uninvited.

No matter how much time I spend here I can't escape the whiteness of my skin, the way I stand out no matter what I do. But it's more than my skin. It's my privilege.

In my own eyes, I could only see how ridiculous I looked. How typical white-girl-goes-to-Africa. But in their eyes, the hair was a way to make me part of them, at least for a moment.

I never knew, until I came here, that my background could be something to apologize for. That these privileges were so randomly given to me, while other people were just as randomly denied...Privilege has begun to feel like and inescapable infection. I carry its implications with me, and my desire to understand how it works only seems to underscore it.

Ever since I was a child my reaction to the forbidden has been a stubborn desire to keep pushing: obstacles make something uncontrollably and deeply necessary.

While I live my life expecting to live, others expect that they might die. The rules of the world are not the same for all of us.

I think of what it means to be a teenager in America, necessarily pushing boundaries, making expected mistakes. Here there is no margin for error: a mistake, no matter how insignificant, dashes any small hopes to break the cycle of poverty. Here in Kibera the world is relentless and unforgiving.